The Orb – The COW Remixes: Sin In Space Pt. 3 (Kompakt)

A year on from their preceding instalment, this third volume in The Orb’s ‘Sin In Space’ remix 12” EP series sees Dr Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlman turning their attention to last year’s ‘COW / Chill Out World!’ album, and packs in three different remixes of tracks from that release by artists enlisted from the Kompakt label roster. Somewhat characteristically, it’s The Field who contributes the most sprawling and abstracted reworking here, taking ‘9 Elms Over River Eno’ off on a nine minute journey through cascades of sampled bird calls, twinkling electronics and lazily shuffling rhythms, the layered textures beneath building into a driving roar before dying away completely against buzzing bass synths, as background samples of kids playing at the beach get dubbed and reverbed all over the place.

Dave DK meanwhile goes for a far more dancefloor oriented outing with his streamlined tech-house centred reworking of ‘4AM Exhale’, smearing soulful atmospherics and ambient pads against a crisply pressurised backbone of muted 4/4 kicks and rattling percussion, before lush disco-tinged strings rise into the foreground towards the second half and glitchy crackles play off the flexing rhythms. Lastly, Joerg Burger offers up a remix of ‘5th Dimensions’ that spends its first couple of minutes lost in a swirl of droning ambient tones and birdsong, before shuffling off-step house beats arrive to send things gliding off into the distance amidst reversed instrumental samples, the loping rhythms and bouncing bass adding a warm sense of funk.

With the digital download version there’s also an additional remix of ‘Wireless’ by Leandro Fresco that offers up a near beatless take that’s easily one of the nicest ambient-centred highlights here. As a more dancefloor centred remix companion piece to The Orb’s ‘COW / Chill Out World!’ album, this EP manages to stay consistently inspired.